Israel hits Hezbollah in Beirut after Iran strike

The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday claimed credit for an attack on Beirut’s Bint Jabal municipality building. Militants with the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah were using the building to shelter their operations, the IDF said. At least nine people were killed and 14 injured in the Israeli attack, according to a translated social media post by the Lebanese Health Ministry. Earlier this week Israel weathered a barrage of missiles from Iran, with defensive help from U.S. forces.

The Israeli military also carried out roughly 200 other attacks on sites in Lebanon allegedly affiliated with Hezbollah, the IDF said. Earlier this week, the IDF explained that it was beginning limited ground incursions into Lebanon intended to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure. It also revealed that Israeli troops had already carried out dozens of such incursions since the beginning of the war.

What’s happening in terms of a response to Iran? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with security establishment leaders on Wednesday. No Israeli citizens died from Iran’s bombardment of nearly 200 missiles, but a simultaneous shooting in Jaffa claimed the lives of several Israelis.

Is Israel conducting strikes anywhere else? The IDF on Thursday provided an overview of its last three months of military operations in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military eliminated roughly 450 terrorists over that three month period, it said. In one specific raid earlier in the summer, the IDF killed the head of the terrorist group Hamas’ governing body in Gaza and two other high-ranking militants. The Israeli Air Force killed the three leaders in an airstrike that destroyed an underground compound belonging to Hamas, the IDF said.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Sift about how Israel has promised to respond to Iran’s attack wherever and however it chooses to.